Got the M4100SH from digitalconnection.com on Monday. I waited for this unit as it supports h.264 video. Full details are at: [www.digitalconnection.com]

Specs are:

Main Chipset Sigma Design EM8623
VFD Display 7 Alpha-Numeric Character, 5 Digital Numeric
Video Format : wmv, avi, mpg, vob, mp4, asf, tp, trp,
Codec: MPEG 1/2/4, DiVX, XVID, H.264
Resolution: Up to 1920x1080i
Audio: MP3, WMA, AAC, Ogg, PCM, FLAC, M4A, WAV, DD and DTS (pass-through and downmix)
Photo: BMP, JPG

Connections;
2x USB 2.0 Host
1x USB 2.0 Target
1x LAN (10/100Mbps) (wireless is supported via usb wireless adapters)
1x I/O Jack (Optional Breakout Box) (this is for a HDtv tuner card)
AV In/Out Video: HDMI, Component, S-Video, Composite
Audio: Coaxial (S/PDIF), Optical, Analog Stereo
File System: NTFS, FAT32
Text Subtitle: smi, sub, srt, aqt, utf, irc
Image Subtitle: sub (with idx)

Languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Japanese, Koran
Fan: 40mm Brushless, Variable Speed, Temperature Sensing
Flash ROM: 16 MB
Internal Power: 90-240V
Size: 7.2" (W) x 5.47" (D) x 2.9" (H)

It supports one internal SATA drive (not included). I installed a Seagate 500 gig drive. The manual is mediocre. I tried hooking the unit up to a XP box to get it set up. Windows won't recognize it. Hooked it up to my Mac Pro and formatted the drive as MS-DOS (Fat32) using Disk Utility. I created three folders at the root level: Audio, Photo, and Video. I also downloaded the latest firmware from DVICO and placed the file at the root level. I loaded some avi files and dvd folders on it. The transfer process isn't the fastest due to USB connection.

Disconnected it from the computer and hooked it up to the tv using component connections. Unfortunately, my hdtv only has one dvi connection. Boot up took a few seconds. I didn't time it, but it seemed to be ready faster than any of the dvd players I have. Pressed the TV Out button a few times to get it to display on the tv. Once the menu came up, everything was in French. Changing the language and adjusting the menu settings was pretty straight forward. The user interface is pretty easy. I then selected the firmware file and pressed play. The update took about 10 minutes to complete.

Playing dvd's from video_ts folders required choosing the ifo file. This was a little more complex than I wanted, as the goal was to use this for the kids so that they don't have to swap discs all the time. I wound up converting all the dvd folders to iso images and reinstalling. Hit the first snag - Fat32 doesn't support individual files over 3 something gig. Connected the TViX to the XP box and reformatted the drive as NTFS. Only problem with this is that I can no longer load files from the Mac. With the iso image though, one only has to select the image and press play. Picture and audio quality is quite good. I didn't get to truly test the audio as the kids were asleep.

Photo playback works well. You can nest folders in folders, which is a nice way to organize them. I haven't tried the audio playback yet, but don't expect any problems. When I get around to it, I will plug in a usb 802.11g adapter and try to network it. I also want to hook up a usb drive to it to see how well video playback works.

Overall, I am quite happy with the unit so far.

As for ripping dvd's, I am using MacTheRIpper to rip the movie and menus. Most of the kids movies have wound up in the 2 - 3 gig range so far. On the larger ones, I usually compress them a bit. Then I use Toast to create an iso image onto an external hard drive. Then I use the XP box to transfer the files to the TVix. I just wish that there was a way to write to a NTFS formatted drive using a Mac.